In modern agricultural practice, particularly in regard to preparing mixtures of feed and especially feed to be fed to animals to be slaughtered for human consumption, it is relatively common at present to provide feed material grinders and mixers which contain various feed materials in separate bins and convey quantities thereof, preferably measured, to grinding and/or mixing equipment which produces a mixed feed of desired proportions of ingredients which is ready for delivery either to storage or to feed lots or troughs, as desired. Various arrangements of conveyors and especially augers are employed in prior devices of the type referred to and it is also relatively common practice to include mechanism of this type in portable machines and particularly those which derive power from a PTO arrangement which, for example, quite commonly derives power from a tractor. The present invention comprises an improvement over this type of mechanism and provides advantages over those devices which have been developed heretofore.
Representative of certain types of agricultural material grinder-mixer machines which have been developed heretofore are prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,800,238 to Oliver, dated July 23, 1957, and 3,997,146, to Kline, dated Dec. 14, 1976. In these devices, there is a central cylindrical tank having a truncated conical bottom and in which a vertical auger is arranged to feed material upwardly from an inlet auger communicating with the bottom of the tank and arranged to move feed either from a hammermill or a mixing hopper, the material then being further mixed in the tank prior to delivering the same to a discharge mechanism such as a laterally extending auger from which the material is discharged to a feed lot, trough, or otherwise.
It has also been previously proposed to provide in a portable structure a plurality of bins or hoppers in which, for example, different materials of feed are contained and augers are provided in the bottoms of the bin to feed the material for discharge in any desired manner. Such a machine comprises the subject matter of prior U.S. Pat. No. 3,356,270 to Heider, dated Dec. 5, 1967 and said patent illustrates certain types of closures over the augers in the bottom portion of the bin and mechanism to open the closures to various degrees, as desired.
A more sophisticated type of portable feed grinder-mixer than disclosed in the preceding patents comprises the subject matter of prior U.S. Pat. No. 4,432,499 to Henkensiefken et al, dated Feb. 21, 1984, in which a single, relatively large hopper or bin is mounted on a portable frame and a pair of vertical augers extend upward from the lower portion of the bin to achieve mixing of material therein and, in the lower portion of the bin, a pair of horizontal augers are arranged for rotation in opposite directions in order to effect substantial mixing of material in the bin prior to the same being discharged, for example, by means of a vertical auger which communicates with an upper horizontal auger adapted to be swung to any location desired above the top of the bin.
In the Henkensiefken et al patent, the addition of an additive to the mixed material from a supplemental hopper 52 is suggested and in the Kline patent, an auxiliary hopper 45, for a similar purpose, is disclosed but such addition is achieved in a different manner from that of the present invention.
In prior U.S. Pat. No. 3,721,179 to Applegate, dated Mar. 20, 1973, apparatus is also shown wherein addition of an additive to crop material is accomplished. In the Applegate patent apparatus is disclosed for applying liquid preservative to grain as it is being moved by an auger conveyor.
Due to certain requirements of constantly progressive systems of feeding stock animals and especially those intended for human consumption, more sophisticated mechanisms are required by consumers of the machines presently being manufactured and, accordingly, the necessitated changes require additions and innovations not found in the prior art and the present invention is an example of satisfying the further demand for improvements by the agricultural feeding industry, details of which are set forth below.